Motivation: The Plan

The P.F. Chang Rock 'n' Roll Marathon is 21 weeks from today. According to references I've found, training should begin 12-14 weeks prior to the race assuming you're in pretty good shape.

Well, we're not couch potatoes. This summer we've been swimming, walking a little and there's Wii Fit. OK, we're not doing much. At this point, general workouts and endurance training is what's needed.

This past week we started back on the bikes. Keep in mind that we're still in triple digits so there's a balance between biking and heat exhaustion. For the next few weeks, the plan is for Papa to bike home twice a week (8.5 miles each time) and Nana to bike home once a week (16.5 miles).

In addition we'll start evening walks. This will help us determine our baseline pace per mile. We are not planning on running the entire half marathon. Ours will be a run/walk combo so walking and getting up to a good pace is important.

We finished the 4.2 mile Pat's Run in 58 minutes last April doing a walk/run. The half marathon is 13 miles so, at this point, I'm hoping that we can finish in 3.25 - 3.5 hours. Of course, we'll have a better idea on the goal once we start into the serious training. We should have our final goal around Thanksgiving.

Currently Nana is reading the book Run Faster From the 5K to the Marathon: How to Be Your Own Best Coach by Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald. Since neither of us have a good idea of how to train for a half marathon, or even run for that matter, hopefully this book will help us determine what we need to do. In addition, we're thinking about joining the Tempe Team. Joining the team will give us opportunities to join other team members in scheduled training.

But first...we just need to get into a workout routine again. That's the goal for this week.